Our Climate Crisis - Napa Valley Sierra Club Meeting
Dr. Stanley P. Rhodes
President, SCS Global Services
US Life Cycle Assessment Expert to ISO-TC 207, Environmental Management
Often overlooked in the debates about how to combat climate change, yet vital to the discussion, are the metrics used for climate accounting. These climate metrics lie at the heart of treaty negotiations, government policies, carbon registries, and corporate goal-setting, and are the basis for evaluating how billions of dollars are invested for carbon offsets and mitigation efforts, including Napa's Climate Action Plan.
The climate metrics currently in use worldwide date back to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. However, while climate science has progressed significantly since that time, the climate metrics have stood still. We now know much more about the contribution of short-lived climate forcers such as black carbon, the role of climate coolants, the importance of regional hotspots such as the Arctic, and oncoming temperature tipping points.
During this talk, Dr. Rhodes will bring us up-to-speed on the latest climate science, explain the limits of current climate accounting methods, then describe how new, updated climate metrics can not only overcome these hurdles, but also provide new insights into the identification of effective climate mitigation solutions.